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Hellgate F2P relaunch this year

The North American free-to-play relaunch of Flagship's ill-fated Hellgate: London is on track for this year, with a beta test in June.

Back in January 2010, HanbitSoft announced that it had secured the worldwide publishing rights to Flagship's ill-fated action-RPG Hellgate: London and would be bringing it to North America. Until today, it hadn't had much more to say on the subject.

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Hanbit confirmed today that Hellgate will be brought back to North America under a free-to-play MMO model later this year. A curiously short closed beta test will run from June 3 to June 5; details on how to enter are promised "soon." F2P MMOs are typically supported by optional microtransactions for in-game items and bonuses.

Hellgate: London shut down in North America in February 2009, having been kept alive by its publisher for several months following the closure of developer Flagship Studios.

However, Hanbit continued to develop and run Hellgate in South Korea, turning it free-to-play. Hellgate was in desperate need of more development time when it launched, so hopefully this extra time has made a meaningful difference.

Hellgate, if you missed it the first time around, was a largely first-person action-RPG set in a demon-infested near-future London. Launching in October 2007, it was developed by Flagship, the studio founded by Diablo veterans including Bill Roper, Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik.